COVID-19 and the great resignation: The role of death anxiety, need for meaningful work, and task significance.

Abstract

One of the most perplexing aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that although it created employment uncertainty, employees were reporting a higher-than-expected intent to turnover. To understand this COVID-19-induced "Great Resignation," we applied terror management theory (TMT). Specifically, we hypothesized that death anxiety from COVID-19 indirectly relates to turnover intentions via the increase in the need for meaningful work, and that task significance would conditionally moderate this indirect effect. We tested these hypotheses across four studies, including a multiwave field study, an online experiment study, a quasi-experiment study, and a field study based on five-wave longitudinal data collected weekly. Our findings illustrate that death anxiety caused by COVID-19 indirectly relates to turnover intentions via an increase in the need for meaningful work. Further, this effect holds at lower levels of task significance, but not at higher levels of task significance. This suggests that a job characteristic-task significance-can satisfy employees' death anxiety-induced increase in the need for meaningful work, such that it does not eventuate in increased turnover intentions. Theoretical and practical implications related to COVID-19 and TMT as it relates to work contexts are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).